FAQs

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Well, yes and no.  We need money to survive to eat that food our pesky stomachs grumble about.  Also musical equipment is definitely NOT cheap and regardless of how much we love music, hours of WORK still go into making new creative content.  We wish it was free, but it isn't.

That being said, we keep things 'open source' cause we believe in the good in people.  We want to give you the chance to listen risk free and if it isn't your cup of tea you can move along and use your money to support an artist you vibe with.  If you do really love our work, we think you'll be happy to support us since - as we'll stress one more time - it's not free to make the donationwaves.  Your support will help sustain the artist commune.  We understand not everyone is in a position to support us financially and that is why we offer the open source 'pay what you feel' model.  Say you are a fellow artist starting out want to sample or remix one of our works, well, do it.  If nothing happens with that work, well then there was no point in the whole licensing rigmarole; if you find fame and fortune give us or proportionate dues.  It's all about the golden rule and fair trade.  That is what we believe in.

With regards to our studio time, we are open to negotiation.  We do not owe anyone free studio time. There is not such thing anyways and chances are if you presuppose that we must foot the bill for your project we're probably not going to be very sympathetic to your style.  

Note our releases are under the Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.  This is in place to ensure respectively that no one is ego tripping over stuff they didn't do, aren't making 100% ludicrous profits for work they didn't do, or taking our works to expand the sonic palette and diminishing music for future generations with copyright nazism.  We reserve those right, but note the spirit of the releases are to enrich the public domain.  You certainly don't have to fret about documenting a tiny blip of a sample; you CAN make a living off of remixing, DJ-ing, covering, promoting our content; you can copyright derivatives if there is reasonable context that makes this a necessity.  We reserve the right to invoke attribution, non-commercial, and share-alike clause, but we hope we never have to.  In fact, the initial idea was to release everything to the public domain.  However, the doomsday scenario of someone ripping a whole album, tweaking an imperceptible detail, copyrighting it, feeding it to an advertising juggernaut, and making obscene money without giving credit or profit to those who deserve it made us opt for the aforementioned Creative Commons license.  Now you're probably thinking that is so absurdly unlikely, and yes, it is.  It's just as unlikely as us screaming legalese at you for any small technical infractions of the license.  In fact, these small infractions occur all the time upon copyrighted works anyways.  Ain't no body got time to police these little things that don't matter.  Use commonsense and integrity and you've got no problem with us.  So yes, you have the personal and artistic freedom to share, consume, and collage our works however you please, but no this does not by extension give you carte blanche freedom to be a D-bag.  Just be cool and you can rest assured we aren't gonna hassle you with non sense.

Good question. Worst case scenario would be someone steals your work 0 for 0, 1 for 1, EXACT digital replica, claims to be you and uses immense power and money to silence you.  That would definitely suck.  But if this bizarre scenario actually unfolds, we doubt that a copyright will stop it - lets keep it real here, corrupt evil powers DON'T abide by morality, let alone the law.  Now think about that music we made, surely you were influenced by someone else, surly there are traces of another's work in your musical DNA.  Why worry about someone else internalizing your work and giving it new life?   Chances are the people who cover, share, or sample your work and make it a whole new thing (which we think is awesome by the way!) will actually be helping you by giving you exposure, promotion, cultural relevance.  We believe that by laboring out of love is the best way to get one back and once you find a committed fan base they will support you artistically and financially - and even calling out any lame duck frauds who would dare to ascribe their ego to your work.  We know it's hard to make a living in the music biz, whether you're the artist or the CEO of the label and that is why we leave the records open to commercial use (a necessary evil) so that the artist can make a living, the DJ, the promoter...really we want everyone to be able to thrive and live a fully realized life in peace and spiritual light.  So don't worry about the bum who would be potentially performing a cover of your work for some coin - c'mon!  Be grateful for this life and the UNIVERSAL conditions that allowed the journey to reach that point and manifest into such a resonate work of art.  We are not interested in adding to the list of commodities on the 'published' music list; we are interested in realizing the infinite possibilities of music for future generations to explore the inner/outer world and be free and inspired to carry the torch once the fart who wrote this is done passing' thru - yikes! In sum, don't sweat the copyright issue.  If someone does the super evil example given at the top you would still have moral right and an anti-piracy claim to defend yourself.  We are named T.U.F.F.~L.U.V.S.~RecLab because we know it will be a tough road a head a musicians not out for money at any cost.  The acronym of T.U.F.F.~L.U.V.S. also illustrates the fact that once the illusions of the ego is shattered, we ultimately don't own anything - not even this body, and the more we clamp down on the fruits of our labor the less people owe us for our good works.  What we wish for is fair trade in every industry so we can all live fruitful lives.  That being said, if you are a fan, please support the artist and label, be it this one or another.  We are aware of the injustice in the world and don't want to bar anyone from the music (plus not even the megalith labels and Hollywood can stop the distribution of their multimedia and we don't have resources to waste), but if you can support us we are infinitely grateful!  It's like tossing a bone to a street performer, only we're on the digital street.  Overall, we think copyright is counterproductive to our mission/vision and will make us less sustainable with the right managment overhead and low returns.  We don't want to do business. We want to do music.  We hope that we have convinced you that there is indeed a good future here for artists who want to collaborate and inspired fan to contribute money or shares when possible.  Make your sandcastle however you please.  Peace be with you. ॐ 

We like working with psychedelic rock, funk, hip-hop and jazz the most, but really just about anything is good - folk, indie, blues, soul, etc. even pop!  Chances are that you will get more out of our studio if you are not looking to make pop music thou.

It depends if you are a listener or collaborator, but all around the best contact method is email.  If you are looking for new releases the subscribing to our youtube or bandcamp would be best.  If you are looking to enlist our studio/production services for a project best bet again would be email or our Facebook page.  (see links tab)

Speaking as the founder, I studied philosophy for 4+ years and love music and throughly believe that music is a conduit towards divine mathematical truths, but can also be cathartic expressions of the human condition, bridges to other times and cultures, or just good old plain fun.  In short, it is absolutely priceless to me and that is why there is so much idealism.  I do recognize the other side of the coin, but I feel that the nitty gritty realities will follow so why bog everything down with the humdrum?

Homeless.